Systems for injecting additives into a liquid product, such as natural gas or propane, are generally known. Because natural gas is colorless and odorless, addition of liquid stenching agents, such as mercaptans, to odorize gas, is commonly used to warn users of dangerous gas leaks. In fact, gas odorization has been widely endorsed by the industry in an effort to detect gas leaks.
When adding a fluid additive to a fluid chemical product, it is necessary to precisely control the amount of additive added to the liquid product for several reasons. First, usually a specified minimum amount is required to perform the necessary function. Also, the additive fluids can be expensive, so their use must be carefully conserved. Because it is important to determine the amount of additive to be injected into a system, such as a pipeline, sophisticated systems have been developed to determine the quantity of additive injected.
However, there is a need in the industry for a system including an apparatus for additizing a liquid product that not only enables the operator to provide a staged amount of additive available for supplying an injector to dose a liquid product, but to visually verify the availability of the staged amount and usage of the staged amount of additive throughout the entire injection process and also at the end of the process.